Party Balloons

"The Beach Comber"

1

They amazed her; the things she always found after a party. After it had spread like a rising tide throughout the entire house, and then receded.

They made her feel like some kind of urban beach comber.

Of course, her beach was never like something you'd find on the coast of Tahiti, or Playa del Carmen, or Catalina Island. When the tide withdrew from her beach, it didn't leave any ornate seashells or sand-polished pieces of driftwood behind.

No, her beach was more like Cabrillo, in L.A. County, or that other one, south of Hollywood... Avino? No, Avalon. Or maybe Doheny—

Fucking Doheny... The Beach Boys wouldn't dare go "Surfin' Safari" there these days.

Because her beach was usually left littered instead with half-empty SOLO cups, bottles (with no messages inside; only soggy cigarettes) and trash.

Scattered amongst that, she'd usually find things of a more... intimate nature: typically panties, and maybe a few bras. Nothing expensive, mind you; never any Bordelle or LaPerla, not even the occasional Vicky's Secret. It was always cheap stuff, and thus expendable; the kind worn by girls who expected to lose their underwear.

"Expendable underwear, for expendable girls". What a slogan that would make. The women's lib movement would probably shit a collective brick if anyone-

Although...

Really, if marketed right, it would probably sell... and like hotcakes too. Cheap underwear for girls who want to feel cheap, because cheap is nasty, and nasty is sexy. So why not stop beating around the bush (ha-ha, beating around the bush, that's a funny one! Let's give Diane a big round of applause, folks...), and just make sexy cheap?

In any case, cheap or not there they'd be, various women's delicates littering the various parts of her ad hoc beach, like the washed up remains of some shipwrecked libertine party boat.

She imagined a rescue plane circling overhead, looking down on them. She knew just what it would report.

FLASH TRAFFIC: WRECK SIGHTED OFF THE COAST OF DIANE'S BIG, EMPTY, MANSION OF A HOUSE (STOP) NO APPARENT SURVIVORS (STOP) CHEAP (BUT SEXY) DEBRIS VISIBLE FROM AIR (STOP)

That thought however, earned no applause from her internal studio audience. Oh, once upon a time she might have found it amusing; after all, it made for a pretty good analogy: the beach, the wreckage...

The problem was with the "debris". It just wasn't all sexy, was it? Certainly the empty cups and bottles never were. Neither were some of the other items that she typically found. In fact, those were often quite disgusting: used condoms (when she was lucky enough not to just find crusted smears of jizz), men's underwear... even vibrators (sometimes with jizz still on them, sometimes with worse).

Don't forget the other problem with your clever little analogy: the part about there being no survivors... That's not very funny either, is it? Sounds a little too much like-

And Jesus, the drugs- She had to admit, the drugs were getting out of hand. At first it had just been booze and weed, but lately she'd been finding more and more needles. Those, and other shit she couldn't even identify.

Whatever- in the end, it all had to go.

Although she'd been forced to get rid of it herself this time; the cleaners had basically told her to go fuck herself after the last party. The needles scared them too, she guessed.

So she'd picked up the bottles and the cups, the condoms, the needles (she'd double-bagged those; she didn't want the garbage men to get stuck by one), and the three pairs of panties that she'd found on the car, out in the garage (although, for reasons she didn't want to admit, she'd left the smudge marks their owners had left on its long hood).

Yes, she'd cleaned up all of it.

Except for the balloons...